STEM SHOWCASE SETS STAGE FOR FUTURE

Event shows kids that science can be challenging, engaging, fun

The largest crowd of the morning at the STEM Saturday event at Cal State San Marcos was gathered around tables set out in the brilliant sunshine, where middle schoolers — their hands moving nearly at the speed of sound — solved Rubik’s cubes in teams of eight.

With hundreds cheering them on, the Wangenheim Cube Club of Wangenheim Middle School in Mira Mesa finished first in the preliminary round. It took the kids just 2 minutes and 49 seconds to correctly solve all 25 Rubik’s cubes.

“It’s great for teamwork and communications between the students,” Wangenheim co-coach Genevieve Esmende said.

“It has a lot to do with patterns. Students have to memorize certain steps. There’s a beginner method how to initially solve it, but a lot of kids have found faster ways.”

STEM Saturday — STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — is all about getting kids to enjoy learning and to develop skills that will be key in the coming decades to getting good jobs, said Katherine Kantardjieff, dean of the college of sciences and mathematics at the university.

There were more than 75 interactive demonstrations and hands-on science activities going on all at once. Rockets were being launched over by Markstein Hall, and there was a Frisbee-throwing robot, solar telescopes for looking at sunspots, mammal tracking and far more.

Kantardjieff and just about every volunteer was thrilled that the weather was so nice, because last year rain poured down and everything had to be moved inside. Not this year. Sunburns were coming on strong, and bottled-watered sales were — pardon the pun — skyrocketing.

Kantardjieff said STEM Saturday is the brainchild of the Classical Academies, a group of North County charter schools, in cooperation with the university.

Thousands of kids and their parents were streaming onto campus at midday Saturday. Last year’s rain-soaked event attracted 3,000 people, and expectations were for more this time around.

“The idea is really to show science is interesting, to show science is fun and get kids turned on to school,” Kantardjieff said.

“The way I tell people: Science is the content, technology is the application and the enabler, engineering is problem-solving, and math is the language we speak.

“We need to make sure the public is scientifically literate ... that’s important. The next decade is going to require a lot of STEM skills for jobs.”